Oh the Endless Film Adaptations

I love being told stories. I eat ’em up. I’m that person that leans in when we get to the “good part,” that gasps and says, “Ah,” at intrigue and full body jumps at shocking moments (as my husband will tell you.) I have a particular love for books in every form; reading the words myself or audio. If you’ve read any of my former posts then this is old news. But what I haven’t said here before is I LOVE MOVIES! It runs deep and eternal, this love. I want to know how they were made, factoids about being on set and the politics that had to be cut through to create this film. So, with this proclamation I’d like to talk about film adaptations of books.

I have difficulty reading a book after I’ve seen the movie, even if they are drastically different. (I also can’t reread books, but I can relisten to audio books.) If I see a trailer and find out it was a book first, then I better get on reading that story. That’s what happened with The Martian. (Also full disclosure about me, my most impractical fear is dying in space. I know, I know, just don’t go to space. I said it was impractical.) I almost didn’t read this story, my own issues and all that, but then I found out it was originally self-published and took the plunge. My totally bias opinion is it’s fantastic. I geeked out on all the science and the character has such a light hearted competence about him that you aren’t too stressed while reading. The adaptation of it was very well done, the movie didn’t stick as hard for me as the book, but great job. They made decent changes for the new media.

A trilogy that I enjoyed was picked up by SyFy and I recently watched the trailer. If you have not read The Magicians then you should get on that. I’m kinda nervous about the adaptation. I understand that there are always going to be changes from one medium to another, but the feeling or tone of the story needs to remain true in order for the adaptation to be successful. I feel like a very self-indulgent fan saying this but based on the trailer I don’t know if they conveyed the right emotion. I’ll obviously watch the first couple episodes to know for sure.

Please talk to me about adaptations that you loved or that didn’t hit the mark.

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4 thoughts on “Oh the Endless Film Adaptations ”

One of my favourite books is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke and the BBC adaptation of that was absolutely phenomenal – they did a really great job!

There are a few films I preferred to the books too: K-PAX and Girl, Interrupted come to mind.

The one adaptation that really irritated me was Under the Dome by Stephen King. I really enjoyed the book, but the TV changed the good guy into the bad guy and swapped the names of the characters around. It was truly horrible.